Cal ranked as the 45th-best college football program of the Associated Press era|Cal Hot Topics|Team BattleGround|College BattleGround

The Associated Press released their Top 100 football programs in the 80 years that they’ve been ranking said programs. The California Golden Bears came in at #45, which is somewhat mediocre. Here’s the methodology used to assemble the rankings:

To determine the all-time Top 25, the AP formula counted poll appearances (one point) to mark consistency, No. 1 rankings (two points) to acknowledge elite programs and gave a bonus for AP championships (10 points).

The Golden Bears earned 199 of these points, compared to 1,112 by the #1 team (who doesn’t need to be named here because Go Bears, duh). Garnering less than 18% of their points feels even more underwhelming than that 45th ranking.

Here’s the Pac-12 breakdown:

The bad news gets worse with Cal ranking in the lower half of the conference…

Unfortunately, the AP started ranking teams a full decade after The Wonder Teams of Andy Smith (and four of our five national championships) or Cal would have been likely been ranked a tad higher.